but the road is long, and the song is gone

Kelly Mountain Road
saw a heavy load
with a sagging heart
and a break apart...

I spoke to him words of reassurance and comfort, and not a little enticement, and sent him on his way to sleep. My sweet neko, moving farther away from me, and I don't want it to be over. It's far too easy for me to be melancholy on nights like these, it's a constant struggle not to fall.

voices in me
stood as thick as thieves
with no sympathy
for the beggars art

And the lone wanderer wanders away as well, to wander back when he will. It's ever been our way, to come close through distance. Oddity, but it seems to work, as well as anything does.

But another notch on the belt, and on I go.

but the road is long
and the song is gone
I blow empty
in my cicada shell

And he says, family comes, and he may not appear, and I smile, life's irony galling at times, heavy on the tongue. But of course--I make my choices, I make them plain, I make sure the universe hears them--and the universe ups the ante, subtracting them from me. Now what will you do? my universe asks me.

if I saw my choice
I might find my voice
but I don't know when
and I just can't tell

Wait, I think. It's the only answer I have. Learn patience anew. Perhaps put off the harlequin outfit that's so frustrating me, and work on another outfit entirely, something I can wear to the Dark Victorian ball later this evening...

Perhaps.

you tell me it's temporary
it's a matter of time
by God
don't you think I know it's in my mind?

I don't do alone well, but really, who does? And I'm better at it now than I used to be. I'm better at many things than I used to be, and isn't that an improvement? Reward comes after long trial...maybe my trial isn't over.

It's a thought.

deep behind my face
is a safer place
but old gears are hitched tight
to the gate

But change, oh, I change so slowly. And yes, another irony-rich slice...I can be practically anything--cold or hot, alive or not, furred or feathered or finned, I can sprout leaves or drift as smoke through trees or be the bustle in the hedgerow...but I'm the student in the Life Lessons class who has to have the assignment explained to her again, and who doesn't always turn in her homework when it's due.

it's a daily grind
waiting to unwind
till I hear that click
that unlocks my fate

So I'll see a change is necessary, and two months later, I'll begin to act on it, and two months past that may see the merest ripple on the surface of the tidal pulls happening underneath...I change slowly. I change glacially.

Yet another thing I must find time to work on...

it's right over left
and healing the then
I'll soon be to nothing
but I don't know when

And my rez day is coming up in three days, I have no invites to send out, no idea when or even if I'll be able to celebrate with friends, and I am very, very upset with the man who owes me, because he said the first of this month, I would be paid, and I was counting on those funds to have certain things built...like the cake that screams...and mayhap said invitations.

I have told him this--if he makes me miss my rez day party--and Taiyou's opening--on the tenth? I will be quite wroth with him. It may not, it likely won't, kill the friendship, but it may quite effectively hobble it...

(Song is most of "Soon Be to Nothing", from the Indigo Girls)